Stripped and Screwed!

I'm taking a break from Spoonin' today, and talking about something else -  a topic I hardly ever (if ever) breach. But this is my own personal story of how I found myself stripped and screwed last night. Oh the things that can happen after midnight!

I just had a tenant to move out of my townhouse, and was there trying to work on a small list of repairs that I felt I could take on myself, one of those being changing the locks. I mean you just never know how many key copies have been produced and handed out across town. Pretty easy project right? That was until four screws, three in the door jamb plate, and one in the door became stripped. If you have never experienced trying to remove a 3-4" inch stripped screw, let me tell you, it's the worse. What should have taken twenty minutes turned into more than four hours as one at a time, with the help of a power drill, we were facing four stripped screws, which were now half in-half out the door jamb refusing to budge in either direction. At this point the door couldn't be closed or locked.

We twisted, we pried, we plier-ed, we wrenched.
We took a break, we stared, we sighed, we Googled.
We tried a flat rubber band,  we called Lowe's, we called Home Depot, we bought a "Grab It" extractor tool. But it was all too no avail.  Those screws really loved that door frame.

"We might have to call a locksmith" Drea sighed in defeat.

"At this time of night? Un-uh! That's going to be an instant $100 fee, on top of labor." I had a better idea.

Drea laughed at me when I pulled a small bottle of olive oil out of the refrigerator - the only thing in there, placed there by Davion just the day before. Because the oil was cold, it was cloudy looking, not clear like olive oil usually is.

"What are you gonna do with that frozen oil Ma?" Drea asked laughing. "I'm about to take a picture and tweet this!"

"Go ahead, but these screws are about to come out of here!" I answered.

I took the oil, clouded or not, and doused it on those screws and began to pray, commanding those screws to come out of the door in Jesus' name, and asked the Lord for help. Seriously. I did.  It was now after midnight and I couldn't shut the front door to my house.

Well the Lord heard my cry.  About fifteen minutes later, lo and behold, a Virginia Dominion Power truck rolled up and stopped just a few feet from my front door. It had to be about 12:45am. Seeing Drea standing in the doorway, still wrestling with the stubborn metal, the technician approached to let us know he had to shut the power down for about 3-5 minutes.

Drea simply said "Okay", but I said,

"Can you please help me get these stripped screws out?" (Short version.)

Do y'all know, that young man, Jeremy Sigmund is his name, went to his truck, brought back a couple of tools and wrenched out all four of those screws, doing three of them before he even started his assigned Virginia Power task?  It took him about twenty-five minutes to work out the first three. He left for about ten minutes to do what ever it was Virginia Power was paying him for, then came back for about ten minutes more and removed the final screw.

I thanked him profusely, and he smiled and said, "No problem - y'all have a good night."

Before I closed my eyes at 4am this morning, I stopped by the Virginia Dominion Power website to share this experience with who ever gets customer feedback emails there, and I pray that they recognize and reward him greatly for his outstanding service and kindness.

As for the clouded oil, of course it cleared up once it became room temperature. I saw Drea with it later, applying it on something else when he got frustrated with trying to complete another task!  How's that for funny tweets?

Thank God that He hears our prayers when we're at our wit's end, stripped and screwed - figuratively and literally!

Now click here!